Compare / Azure App Service vs Fly.io Machines
Azure App Service vs Fly.io Machines
Pre-calculated from hand-checked data — Azure App Service checked 2026-08-06, Fly.io checked 2026-08-06.
The short version
Azure App Service and Fly.io Machines split our comparison — the right pick depends on what your project values.
Price Fly.io Machines
Fly.io Machines is cheaper at every stage we model — about $12/mo even for a growing project.
Ease Tie
Both take similar effort to get a first deploy live.
Control Fly.io Machines
Fly.io Machines gives you more control over the stack — the flip side of the convenience trade.
Free tier Azure App Service
Azure App Service has a free tier; Fly.io Machines doesn't.
Features Azure App Service
Azure App Service comes out ahead on 4 of the 15 features we track, versus 3.
What developers say about this matchup
We couldn't find a substantive first-person discussion comparing this exact pair. We leave the section empty instead of filling it with vendor marketing or generic SEO comparisons.
At a glance
| Azure App Service | Fly.io Machines | |
|---|---|---|
| Best for | Teams in the Microsoft ecosystem — .NET shops, enterprise-adjacent projects, or anyone whose employer already pays for Azure. | Dockerized apps that want low cost, fine control, or multi-region placement. |
| How deploys work | Connect GitHub Actions from the portal, push to a local git remote, or run `az webapp up` — runtime stacks for Node, Python, .NET, PHP, and Java are built in. | fly launch builds the image and deploys it; configuration lives in fly.toml and the flyctl CLI. |
| The tradeoff | Capable and git-friendly, but you pay PaaS prices per plan and navigate the most complicated tier system here. | You operate more of the stack yourself — especially the database. |
| Free tier | F1 Free tier: 1 GB RAM, 60 CPU-minutes/day, no custom domain or SLA. Plus a $200/30-day new-account credit. | None |
What you'd realistically pay
Azure App Service Fly.io Machines
| Project stage | Azure App Service | Fly.io Machines | Cheaper |
|---|---|---|---|
| Just starting | ≈$13.14/mo B1 Basic (Linux) — 1 core, 1.75 GB RAM, 10 GB storage, custom domains and SSL, 99.95% SLA. West Europe pricing. | ≈$3/mo shared-cpu-1x, 256 MB — About $2.02/month in Amsterdam if always on; less with scale-to-zero. | Fly.io Machines |
| Steady traffic | ≈$32/mo B1 + managed PostgreSQL — ~$13 B1 Linux plus ~$19 for the cheapest PostgreSQL Flexible Server (B1ms + 32 GiB storage). | ≈$6/mo shared-cpu-1x, 1 GB — About $5.92/month in Amsterdam, plus egress at $0.02/GB. | Fly.io Machines |
| Growing | ≈$84/mo P0v3 + managed PostgreSQL — ~$65 Premium P0v3 (1 vCPU, 4 GB, autoscale and slots) plus ~$19 for managed PostgreSQL. | ≈$12/mo Two 1 GB Machines — Two machines for availability; databases and egress on top. | Fly.io Machines |
Azure App Service pricing notes
- Prices are West Europe, per App Service Plan (~730 h/month); they vary by region.
- Windows plans cost roughly 4× Linux at the Basic tier because the license is baked in.
- Bandwidth: first 100 GB/month free, then about $0.087/GB.
- Savings plans and reservations cut Premium prices by up to ~55%.
Fly.io Machines pricing notes
- Billed per second only while Machines are started; scale-to-zero is natively supported.
- Egress: $0.02/GB in North America and Europe; more elsewhere.
Our ratings
Ease of use
Pricing clarity Fly.io Machines
Free tier Azure App Service
Scaling
Control Fly.io Machines
Feature by feature
Azure App Service wins 4, Fly.io Machines wins 3, with 8 even.
Deploy workflow
| Azure App Service | Fly.io Machines | |
|---|---|---|
| Deploy from Git push | Yes GitHub Actions wired from the portal, local git push, or ZIP deploy. | Partial No native git integration; the documented path is flyctl in GitHub Actions. |
| Preview deploys | Partial Deployment slots (Standard tier and up) give staging environments, but no automatic PR previews. | Partial PR apps work via the official GitHub Action, not out of the box. |
| Official CLI | Yes `az webapp up` deploys an app in one command. | Yes flyctl does everything: launch, deploy, scale, ssh, logs. |
| Instant rollbacks | Partial Slot swaps revert instantly on Standard+; Basic and Free redeploy the old build instead. | Partial Redeploy any previous image; no one-click dashboard rollback. |
Platform
| Azure App Service | Fly.io Machines | |
|---|---|---|
| Custom domains + HTTPS | Yes Custom domains with managed certificates from the B1 tier up. | Yes Custom domains with free managed certificates. |
| Built-in CDN / edge network | Partial Azure Front Door / CDN integrate but are separate billed services. | Partial Anycast routing sends users to the nearest region, but there is no static-asset CDN. |
| Serverless functions | Partial Azure Functions is a sibling product and can even run on the same plan, but it is not part of App Service itself. | No Machines are micro-VMs, not functions. |
| Docker containers | Yes Custom containers are first-class on Linux plans. | Yes A Docker image is the deployment unit. |
| SSH / shell access | Partial Browser and CLI SSH into the app container — not a VM you own. | Yes fly ssh console opens a shell in any running Machine. |
| EU hosting region | Yes West Europe, North Europe, Germany, France, Sweden, Poland, Italy, Spain, and more. | Yes Amsterdam, Paris, Frankfurt, London, and more. |
Runtime & operations
| Azure App Service | Fly.io Machines | |
|---|---|---|
| Automatic scaling | Partial Rule-based autoscale from the Standard tier; smarter automatic scaling needs Premium. | Yes Machines autostart and autostop with traffic; scale counts per region. |
| Scale to zero | No Paid plans bill continuously; only the free F1 tier unloads idle apps (with cold starts). | Yes Stopped Machines cost only their storage. |
| Scheduled jobs | Yes WebJobs run scheduled and background tasks inside the plan. | Partial Scheduled Machines run on fixed intervals; full cron needs a workaround. |
| Managed database | Yes Azure Database for PostgreSQL/MySQL from ~$19/month, plus SQL Database and Cosmos DB. | Partial Fly Postgres is automated-but-unmanaged; managed options come from partners like Supabase and Upstash. |
| Logs & metrics built in | Yes Application Insights is deeply integrated — but ingestion bills per GB. | Yes Built-in metrics (Grafana), live logs, and log shipping. |
Watch out for
Azure App Service
- A Windows B1 plan costs ~$55/month versus ~$13 for the same tier on Linux — and default tooling sometimes nudges you toward Windows.
- You pay per App Service Plan, not per app: a second plan doubles the bill even if both are nearly idle.
- The free F1 tier has a hard 60 CPU-minutes/day quota that silently stops your app when exhausted.
- Ride-along services (Application Insights ingestion, Defender for Cloud) show up as surprise line items.
- The spending cap only exists on credit subscriptions (free trial, MSDN) — pay-as-you-go has alerts only.
Fly.io
- New pay-as-you-go organizations get no free allowance.
- Fly Postgres is explicitly unmanaged: automated but not a managed database service — backups and failover are your responsibility.
- Per-second compute plus $0.02/GB egress makes bills variable; prices differ by region.
Read the full reviews: Azure App Service and Fly.io. Or answer four questions to see what fits your project.